Exonerated ex-teacher to be compensated for jail time

Korea Herald

19-03-2025

A 70-year-old former teacher who was recently exonerated of his anti-state charges will receive compensation for being wrongly imprisoned for two years, according to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.
The Busan District Court on Feb. 25 ruled that the state should give Lee Tae-yeong 291.4 million won ($200,000) for the damages inflicted by his time behind bars in the 1980s. The initial sentence was handed down in 1980 when then-high school teacher Lee was serving his mandatory military duty in Busan.
In March of 1980, Lee was arrested by the military authorities for violating the now-defunct anti-communism act and was sentenced to two years in jail. He was accused of speaking in favor of North Korea's totalitarian regime during his college days, saying then-North Korean leader Kim Il-sung is "no different than (former South Korean President) Park Chung-hee in terms of long-term ruling."
Park was officially president of South Korea for 16 years but maintained dictatorial rule over the country for effectively 18 years after taking power in a 1961 military coup. His revision of the Constitution allowed presidents to run for unlimited terms and abolished direct presidential elections.
Lee had also said the anti-communism act, which the Park administration had enacted in 1961 after the coup, was repressive toward the people and must be abolished. The act was eventually abolished in December 1980, due to most of its content overlapping with the National Security Act.
After Lee's release in 1982, the education authorities in South Gyeongsang Province subjected him to a disciplinary committee and took away his teaching license. He was banned from leaving the Busan area while on parole until 1990.
Lee was reinstated as a high school teacher in 1999, and retired in 2018.
The state-commissioned Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated Lee's case last year upon his request. It found that he had been illegally detained and probed in the 1980 investigation, a process that included torture and physical assault. He requested a retrial based on the findings in October and was found not guilty by Busan District Court in December.
"The defendant's testimonies are not to be used as evidence, since it can be said that he had been illegally detained without a warrant on March 8, 1980, and had been subject to brutality since. ... Even if he had praised Kim Il-sung, it cannot be said that (the comment) represents a clear danger to the safety and existence of the state," the court said.